Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Glenn Sugameli, staff attorney for Judging the Environment, Defenders of Wildlife, updates me periodically on progress of federal judicial nominations. Today, he notes a news release from Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy, who complains that a list of consensus choices for federal judgeships are stacking up. In the past, consensus choices have been routinely approved. No longer. Leahy said more than a dozen with approval in committee have not come to a vote in the Senate.

They include Kris Baker of Little Rock, nominated by President Obama to an opening in the Eastern District of Arkansas.

“These highly qualified — consensus — nominees should be confirmed without further delay. They should have been confirmed last year,” said Leahy in a news release. “One hundred and thirty million Americans live in circuits or districts with a judicial vacancy that could be filled if Senate Republicans would consent to votes on these nominees. The delays are as damaging as they are inexplicable.”

State Auditor Andrea Lea, who began her tenure in statewide office with a degree of competence unseen in some other Republican counterparts (think Treasurer Dennis Milligan particularly), is becoming more deeply mired in a political scandal.

In which I fix an overlooked speaker in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's coverage of the observance of the 60th anniversary of Central High School desegregation

Diane Ravitch, a powerful voice against the billionaires trying to replace an egalitarian public education system with a fractured system of winners and losers segregated by race and income in private or privately operated schools, is giving a shoutout to Barclay Key of Little Rock for his review of Little Rock 60 years after the school crisis.